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Most I have done is a few somewhat major cut and scraps and a bumps on the head from standing up too fast. But hey I haven't been doing it long and there's plenty of time for that later.

Don't think I would stop just because of that. In school I boke my ankle in three places, have a screw in my leg and I don't remember a major portion of the day. But it didn't stop me from running it the halls (My wife and sister are both teacher and they love to use me as example of why not to run in the halls )

Edited October 28, 2005 by Polar B's

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During a competitive caching event in Austin a couple years ago I slipped on some busted-up Texas holey rock and gashed the heck out of my shin. My sock was red with blood. Fortunately there was a cacher there who happened to be a nurse and had a very well stocked first aid kit so we were able to save the leg. I still have a scar. The sock was a total loss though.

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I guess the worst I've ever gotten is chronic "cacher's hand". You know, when you've been sticking your hand into "Nature-never-intended-a-person-to-put-a-hand-in-there" spots. Result: Scratches, scrapes, bruises and sometimes the inability to close into a fist or hold a pen properly the next day.

The worst I've been hurt was in the Mahoosic Notch in ME when I was hiking. I slipped on some moss and came within inches of planting face-first on some rocks. I was scraped bloody from above my knee to just where my sock ended, shaking and nearly shocky.

Edited October 28, 2005 by ATMouse

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Well, yes - this summer I broke my foot and suffered bruises, scuffs, and pulled muscles all over my body while caching - sort of. Actually, I was on my way out of the hills from placing a new cache (still not found) on my trailbike. Another rider came around a curve and plowed right into me as I was almost stopped where I thought I was clear out of his way.

Technically - this wasn't really a caching accident, since the only connection to caching is that it got me out of the house and to this particular place. Coulda had such an accident almost anywhere. Really - it was a motorcycle accident after I just happened to be caching.

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During a competitive caching event in Austin a couple years ago I slipped on some busted-up Texas holey rock and gashed the heck out of my shin. My sock was red with blood. Fortunately there was a cacher there who happened to be a nurse and had a very well stocked first aid kit so we were able to save the leg. I still have a scar. The sock was a total loss though.

I had a similar mishap this past summer. I was out quite early in the morning, and everything was covered with dew. I slipped on a wet rock, and my leg went down in a crevice. My shin got lecerated nicely. two and a half months later, I still have the last traces of a scab, and some nice scars.

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Hey Nerve, I read your log and...dang! At least I had help getting out of my mishap.

BTW - just curious about the EMTs having to follow your voice. Didn't they have gps?

Nope - they didn't have GPS. Maybe when we buy a new GPSr we should donate the old ones to our town rescue ambulances. Hey! I kinda like that idea. But then, if the person in trouble doesn't have a GPSr or know their coordinates they still wouldn't be able to find them. My cell phone has GPS capability which is a real good thing.

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...I know that a man died while geocaching in Texas and have heard of other folks who have broken bones, sprained ankles, etc....

Okay, now I am curious! I had heard of a cacher in the midwest somewhere who broke his back while climbing an abandoned RR bridge without safety gear, but I had never heard of a Texan dying while geocaching. Can you provide more details? Thanks!

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...I know that a man died while geocaching in Texas and have heard of other folks who have broken bones, sprained ankles, etc....

Okay, now I am curious! I had heard of a cacher in the midwest somewhere who broke his back while climbing an abandoned RR bridge without safety gear, but I had never heard of a Texan dying while geocaching. Can you provide more details? Thanks!

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Geocaching, I have manage to poke myself in the eye with a stick (it was ugly), caught Lyme, and also came down with allergic dermatitis which required prednisone (a truly ugly drug!). Other than that, I try to avoid the abandoned railroad trestles, and cliffs.

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Sprained my ankle bushwhacking to this cache through the first snow of last winter. Didn't have sense enough to know what happened--kept walking on it until it doubled in size and turned black-n-blue. Then waited a day and hiked on it some more. Naturally, with such good care, it took six months to heal.

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First time.... Just about to go on a week long caching vacation. On the way home from work I just had to go for an FTF on a new cache. While climbing some rocks, I twisted my knee and hyperextended it. Blew that vacation!

However the most serious injury was this last spring. There was a hike I organized into a local wilderness area with two caches along the trail. I made it to the first cache with the rest of the group, but while getting back on the trail after signing the log.... this tree reached out and tripped me!

Down I went.... landing with my treking pole beneath me. I haven't felt that much pain in a long time. Needless to say the hike was over for me... and I headed back to the trailhead.

Thinking it wasn't really anything serious... perhaps a sprain or bad bruise, I waited at the trailhead for the rest of the party. From there we cached our way back to town. I picked up 10 more caches that day, including resolving several DNF's from previous trips.

When I got back to town, I intended to go get an X-Ray..... just in case... but by that time the Clinic was closed and I didn't want to pay ER Rates, so I waited until the next morning.

Next morning, X-rays reveal that I had broken my left arm in four places... all around the elbow. All three bones were broken.

It's now Six months later and I still don't have full strenght back in that arm

Edited October 29, 2005 by Right Wing Wacko

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First time.... Just about to go on a week long caching vacation. On the way home from work I just had to go for an FTF on a new cache. While climbing some rocks, I twisted my knee and hyperextended it. Blew that vacation!

However the most serious injury was this last spring. There was a hike I organized into a local wilderness area with two caches along the trail. I made it to the first cache with the rest of the group, but while getting back on the trail after signing the log.... this tree reached out and tripped me!

Down I went.... landing with my treking pole beneath me. I haven't felt that much pain in a long time. Needless to say the hike was over for me... and I headed back to the trailhead.

Thinking it wasn't really anything serious... perhaps a sprain or bad bruise, I waited at the trailhead for the rest of the party. From there we cached our way back to town. I picked up 10 more caches that day, including resolving several DNF's from previous trips.

When I got back to town, I intended to go get an X-Ray..... just in case... but by that time the Clinic was closed and I didn't want to pay ER Rates, so I waited until the next morning.

Next morning, X-rays reveal that I had broken my left arm in four places... all around the elbow. All three bones were broken.

It's now Six months later and I still don't have full strenght back in that arm

I remember that one well. The frito pies were really good.

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Well. my story starts on Oct 29th 2001. My wife and I went out to place our first cache. The sing on the gate said nature area will close at dusk (what time is dusk). Well we went to pace our cache and the light was getting dim. As we came out of the area we saw that the gate and been locked and there was light. We think what do we do. Well we jump over the fence. It is only 6'. Dawn makes of over and then it is my turn. I jump land and hit the ground in pain. I tried to get up but my knee would not hold me and down I went. I had landed wrong and slipped. The car was near by so I made it back to the car and went to the ER. They could not see a lot from the x-ray but I did broken on bone. I then had a MRI and found out that I tore my ACL in half. Tore my MCL and dislocated my knee cap. After 2 surgeries and 4 months of rehab I was caching again.

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Hey Nerve, I read your log and...dang! At least I had help getting out of my mishap.

BTW - just curious about the EMTs having to follow your voice. Didn't they have gps?

Nope - they didn't have GPS. Maybe when we buy a new GPSr we should donate the old ones to our town rescue ambulances. Hey! I kinda like that idea. But then, if the person in trouble doesn't have a GPSr or know their coordinates they still wouldn't be able to find them. My cell phone has GPS capability which is a real good thing.

GPS and SAR are a poor mix, at least in my region, IMHO. (Hence the screen name) Great fun for urban micros, however.

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Nerves, I was thinking about your incident this afternoon while shopping for caching junk. I was at Big Lots and saw an emergency cell phone charger and dropped 2 in my basket. One will live in my cache sack, now. The other is for my wife.

So far I've not been incapacitated while caching, though I have gotten my fair share of wet, scratched, sunburned, etc. When I was in college I fell while running for the bus... landed square on my knee. Ended up limping back to my car, clear across campus. I can't imagine actually breaking a leg out in the woods. You handled it far better than I fear I might have.

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Nerves, you so lucky you had your cellphone, and you had a signal! It sounds like the two people you ran into were not so helpful. Although I was not geocaching at the time, I have been injured and found that sometimes people are real helpful and sometime they arent. I was riding a street legal dirt bike along abandoned RR tracks,(before cellphones) when a deer decided at the last minute to cross in front of me! After I hit it at about 30 MPH, I was mostly scraped up from the gravel, but did have an deep gash(which I didnt feel at the time) in the side of my leg that required about 8 stitches. I came walking out of the woods covered in blood, and the first person who saw me slowed down, their eyes got real big, and then they took off! I was lucky that the second person stopped and took me to a store nearby and called the EMTs.

The only injury while geocaching that I can report, is that after finding a cache one I went exploring in a gorge in NE Georgia and put my GPS in the center of my pack, with my rappelling rope around it(as protection) and tossed it, when I went to jump over a stream. My Garmin E-Map ended up with a cracked screen! Other than that Ive been lucky !

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while I've had a few scrapes and bruises in my short caching career, I've never been seriously injured. My sympathies to those who have.

My most severe injury occured at the site of a 1,1 micro that was placed on a walking bridge. I had been to the site several times one day, looking over, under around and through that thing before giving up and logging my first DNF. That was painful enough, but the next day I came back with my kids. Within a minute of arriving, my 10 yr. old daughter yells out "I've found it!" causing me to sustain a severe contusion to my already bruised ego.

This instance taught me: If at first you don't succeed, bring your kids.

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Well, this is not about an injury, but close -- it is about something unexpected and weird which happened during a cache hunt. First, however, allow me to explain that the cache in question was Blood & Guts in Virginia (GC73C2), perhaps the weirdest, toughest and most enigmatic adventure cache in the US. This cache mixes Illuminati lore, history and conspiracy theory with cryptology and with bizarre leaps of faith and mystery. A good number of teams which have sought this cache have spent a year or more completing the quest, and a number of teams have given up after a search spanning a year and a half or longer. As part of a 3-person team which we called Mythos and Chaos Squad, we recently tackled this cache. At just about the time we started our search, two teams which had been searching for some time logged their finds on the cache listing page, with each reporting having been briefly kidnapped along the way by Masonic (as in Freemason) groups associated with the Illuminati. There were also afloat in the local caching world plenty of rumors that a goodly number of earlier find teams at B&G had also been kidnapped by the Illuminati or by Masons. We assumed at the time that the authors of the log entries were joking about the kidnapping, and that the rumors were fantasy or deliberate misinformation, spread merely to bolster the mystery and appeal of the Blood & Guts saga. We learned otherwise at a later date. Read on, if you wish.

Ultimately, our team's search was sucessfully completed in less than 25 days, but not without Sue and myself (comprising two of the three members of the Mythos and Chaos Squad) also having been briefly kidnapped by a group of men who identified themselves as "renegade Freemasons". One of the conditions of our release, much as apparently happened with the two earlier teams, was that we are not free to disclose anything more about the entire ordeal than I have mentioned herein, and hence no further details are available. If you really MUST know more, then perhaps you may wish to try to tackle the cache for yourself, and I can almost guarantee you that much the same fate may befall you sometime between stage 3 and the final stage. I hope that you too survive. Life has never seemed so precious since that bizarre crack in reality.

Oh, and one word of advice about this cache: just when you think the search is over, you will discover that it has really only just started and that unimaginable and terrible tasks and tribulations still stand between where you are and the act of signing the logbook.

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A geocacher(peasinapod)I was caching with fell 10 feet on to a boulder and broke 6 ribs,unbelieveably he was able to hike back to our vehicle a half mile away!Believe it or not we continued to find a few more caches on our way to the hospital !Thats one hard core cacher!

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At the site of one of my very own caches I was sitting in the rocks watching my nephew search for the container. I had shifted position and placed my left hand behind me as a prop and felt a sharp pain in my ring finger when I shifted position again, rocks and a boney butt don't mix. I must have pinched my finger between a couple of rocks, had that sick feeling as if I had been kicked. I looked at my finger and saw just a small gash that had scraped the skin, small amount of blood but WOW did it hurt way more pain than the missing skin would cause. Nice purple color developed and it was very very painful to touch. Still hurts if I touch it and its been 4-6 weeks. I am assuming that I've cracked that phalange and can feel a bit of a bump forming, guess the bones are a knitting.

No injury but a sure sign of getting old. I was rock hopping along the side of a mountain, most of you westerners would call a hill and thought to myself that I would be in a real fix if something were to happen 2 miles off the road and in an area of poor cell signal. I kept up what I was doing but had that thought of a busted knee or ankle in the back of my mind, choosing some easier bounces.

Great time to emphasise the idea that any time you go off hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, caching, etc its always good to let someone know where you are going, when you plan on returing......AND to contact them if you change plans.

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My four children are the reason I cache, and while i have sustained no injury my three year old has fallen and cut her head. My (soon to be ex) wife tried to use this in court to say I was neglectful. I guess it doesn't always pay to try to teach your children that books and outdoor activities are better than watching tv.

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It looks like geocachers have sustained injuries that range from mild to major. Many of them affect our geocaching and activities of daily living for a period of time.

I'm sure that we have all been in somewhat dicey situations while geocaching. There are caches that requiring walking along cliffs, climbing trees, train trestles, etc. I've worried that it's just a matter of time before somebody suffers a serious head injury or spinal cord injury totally affecting the rest of their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

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I'm sure that we have all been in somewhat dicey situations while geocaching. There are caches that requiring walking along cliffs, climbing trees, train trestles, etc. I've worried that it's just a matter of time before somebody suffers a serious head injury or spinal cord injury totally affecting the rest of their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Aw, now, that's just the Percocet talking. People take risks in pursuit of trivial pleasures all the time, but it's inactivity that's the real killer in the modern world. Please don't encourage the nervous Nellies out there who would drain the fun out of everything in their crusade to eliminate risk.

All we can hope to do is to mitigate risk by developing skills, planning well, being alert, controlling ego, and knowing the limits of our abilities. Oh, and if we really want to extend life expectancy, minimize car travel and extra trips to the buffet table.

Mend, feel better and the itch to get out and explore will return. I promise.

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It looks like geocachers have sustained injuries that range from mild to major. Many of them affect our geocaching and activities of daily living for a period of time.

I'm sure that we have all been in somewhat dicey situations while geocaching. There are caches that requiring walking along cliffs, climbing trees, train trestles, etc. I've worried that it's just a matter of time before somebody suffers a serious head injury or spinal cord injury totally affecting the rest of their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Nothing personal, and with all due respect, but I find myself feeling very irritated by these words. The writer has -- probably accidentally -- made it sound like geocachers may sufer injuries at a high rate. I have never seen eny evidence of a high rate or even moderate rate of injuries among geocachers, this, and in fact, all the evidence of which I am aware points to a very low rate of injury for most geocachers, likely equal to that for hikers and pedestrians, or perhaps lower. However, I am the first to admit that that the POTENTIAL for serious injury or death for caches bearing a Terrain rating of 4 or more (or perhaps even 3.5 or greater) does exist, and this is one reason why such caches were assigned those high terrain ratings.

Now, Sue and I are both seekers of extreme geocaches (we place them as well), and I have been a spelunker, rock climber, SCUBA diver and cave diver since the early 1980s. I have never seen any evidence which illustrates that geocachers who seek extreme geocaches have a significant rate of injury, and, if anything, my casual observation seems to reveal that geocachers seeking extreme terrain caches suffer fewer injuries than most rock climbers, spelunkers, SCUBA divers and cave divers. In fact, speaking from direct personal experience, we own at least 8 geocaches in our two Psycho Cache series which have Terrain ratings of 5, and a few of them are so severe that we would assign them a terrain rating of 8 if such a score were available! However, other than a few scraped elbows and knees and sore muscles (all of which we GUARANTEE will occur in the caveats on the cache listing pages for these caches) no one has EVER suffered any significant injuries seeking any of our extreme caches. Of course, so far, seekers have heeded our warnings, and only qualified cachers -- with the right equipment and skills -- have gone after these caches.

Bottom line: Overall, I am constantly amazed at the very low injury rate exhibited by geocachers. So, unlike our recent poster, I, for one, do NOT worry that it is a matter of time before someone suffers a serious injury seeking a cache. Of course, pepole do get injured doing all sorts of activities, even while performing activities far more mundane than geocaching, but that is just part of life, and thankfully, these things usually happen at a very low frequency of occurence. Bottom line for me: "Don't worry, be happy!"

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Nothing personal, and with all due respect, but I find myself feeling very irritated by these words. The writer has -- probably accidentally -- made it sound like geocachers may sufer injuries at a high rate. I have never seen eny evidence of a high rate or even moderate rate of injuries among geocachers, this, and in fact, all the evidence of which I am aware points to a very low rate of injury for most geocachers, likely equal to that for hikers and pedestrians, or perhaps lower. However, I am the first to admit that that the POTENTIAL for serious injury or death for caches bearing a Terrain rating of 4 or more (or perhaps even 3.5 or greater) does exist, and this is one reason why such caches were assigned those high terrain ratings.

Now, Sue and I are both seekers of extreme geocaches (we place them as well), and I have been a spelunker, rock climber, SCUBA diver and cave diver since the early 1980s. I have never seen any evidence which illustrates that geocachers who seek extreme geocaches have a significant rate of injury, and, if anything, my casual observation seems to reveal that geocachers seeking extreme terrain caches suffer fewer injuries than most rock climbers, spelunkers, SCUBA divers and cave divers.

I don't take offense at your response and I was not implying that geocachers might have a higher injury rate. I am curious what evidence you might have relative to the rate of injury incurred while engaging in geocaching activity. Although I've searched, I haven't come up with any research or illuminating studies on that subject. Hence, one of my reasons for opening this topic. If you could point me toward that data that you have I would appreciate it. I'm working on formulating a dissertation topic and would like to relate it to geocaching. One of my ideas is the rate of injury while geocaching. Another is prevention of injury while geocaching.

As the number of people engaging in any activity increases, the potential for accidents increases exponentially. I worked for numerous years in neurorehab and noted that many head or spinal cord injuries occurred when people either didn't think things through, did not take precautions or went far beyond their capabilities. Of course, there were plenty of freak and unavoidable accidents as well.

I'm all about prevention, not about putting a damper on people's activities. I think that some people underestimate their limitations or are not prepared while others are more cautious. That is true for the general population as well.

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It looks like geocachers have sustained injuries that range from mild to major. Many of them affect our geocaching and activities of daily living for a period of time.

I'm sure that we have all been in somewhat dicey situations while geocaching. There are caches that requiring walking along cliffs, climbing trees, train trestles, etc. I've worried that it's just a matter of time before somebody suffers a serious head injury or spinal cord injury totally affecting the rest of their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Nerves - I'm sorry to hear about your accident.

Your quoted statement is true -- accidents can happen when you are geocaching. However, you can substitute "backpacking", "bicycling", "canoeing" or any number of activities for the word "geocaching" and your first sentence would still be true.

I would argue with your premise that "we have all been in somewhat dicey situations while geocaching." Yes there are cachers that take risks and go places / do things they aren't prepared for either physically, mentally or in terms of equipment. However, I'd wager that the vast majority of cachers stick to the quick, easy terrain caches that have inherently low risk.

All activities that place the doer at some level of risk. I don't believe that geocaching presents any more risk than any other outdoor physical activity. In fact, if you know and respect your limitations and the surroundings, generally the risks are substantially less than physical activities.

A personal story: a little over ten years ago, way before the days of geocaching, I was bike riding the paved trails of a nearby forest preserve. Back then, I rode these trails 3 or more times a week. Sounds pretty harmless and risk free. The FP is bisected by a fairly busy road. One evening while crossing this road, a driver failed to stop for the red light while I was crossing the road. If I hadn't had a helmet on I would have sustained a critical if not fatal head injury. Fortunately all that happened to me was a broken ankle and compound fracture of the left leg that destroyed five inches of the tibia. A total of ten surgeries and three years of rehab later I can walk fine on flat, even terrain for moderate distances. Hills are a problem and if I walk too much in one day I'll have to use a cane for a couple days after.

From my perspective, riding a bike along a paved trail that requires a street crossing is very risky. Walking in the woods looking for ammo cans, not so much.